


Conversational Implicature

by langsdelijn



Series: Nostalgia [2]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Brocedes, Gen, all angst no comfort, attempted comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 17:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6619405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/langsdelijn/pseuds/langsdelijn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Optional) coda to <i>Old Things Turned New Again</i>: Nico and Lewis talk the next morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversational Implicature

‘About last night,’ Lewis says the next morning at the track. He says it without preamble, not bothering with a greeting or to get Nico’s attention in any other way, just starts talking.

Nico turns in his chair to look behind him. It’s the first time he sees Lewis that day: after that middle-of-the-night interlude, which he remembers in the vague dreamlike terms of a too-short waking moment as longer than it realistically probably was, he’d slept through the night and Lewis had been gone by the time he woke up. Nico looks him over. 

It’s easy to see Lewis is exhausted. Nico remembers he wondered last night if Lewis had slept at all and looking at him now, he doubts it. But if he did, it wasn’t enough for him to be rested. His eyes are bright with the intense unfocussed gloss of fatigue. He has his cap pulled down low so the brim covers his eyes but Nico, looking up at him from here, can still tell even though it casts its shadow over most of his face. His sunglasses are in his hand. Nico’s surprised he took them off, considering.

He’d figured Lewis had gone back to his own room for a change of clothes but actually what he’s wearing today is more of Nico’s stuff—so who knows where Lewis had disappeared off to; gone for a run, maybe. And he picked his clothes well, Nico thinks; their tastes in clothing tend to differ but that charcoal grey vest and those trousers could plausibly belong to either of them. 

Nico turns back the right way around in his chair as Lewis walks over to take the other seat at his table. It’s only then he notices Lewis is not wearing any earrings. He’s not sure how he missed that yesterday but it confirms Lewis hasn’t been back to his own room. (He has more than one pair. Nico knows that if he’d gone back, he’d have fetched a different set.) 

Lewis tosses his sunglasses on the table, pulls out the chair and sits down, perched on the edge of the seat. Around them the motorhome is a hive of activity, the preparations for the coming day in full swing. But no one pays them any attention, everyone too busy with their own routines to take notice of the two of them. All of the commotion passes them by. Nico waits patiently for Lewis to continue. 

The sunglasses have found their way back into Lewis’ hands. Lewis looks at them intently, as if his world has narrowed down to that little square of table. ‘Yeah?’ Nico prompts.

Lewis looks up at him through his eyelashes, his gaze barely reaching out from under the brim of the cap he’s still wearing. After a moment, he raises his head to look at him properly. He fiddles with his sunglasses, almost without realising it seems, alternately tapping each end in a nervous rhythm, an accompanying clatter whenever they hit the table top. And he’s looking at Nico like he’s lost for what he wants to explain.

Lewis blinks. ‘Yeah. Uhm…’

Nico watches some internal debate play out on his face. ‘Look,’ he says, because he doesn’t actually need to have last night explained to him, it’s fine, it happened, whatever, but he’s interrupted before he can say anything else.

‘No, Nico,’ Lewis says. ‘Let me finish.’

Nico nods. He lets the fact that he has hardly started go unstated.

Lewis’ hands still, the sunglasses disappear under the table into his lap or his pocket. He nods to himself. ‘I won’t tell you what happened,’ Lewis begins. Then he lets a pause fall. Nico doesn’t know what for, if he’s expected to react or not but he nods anyway to show he understands and accepts that. ‘It doesn’t matter and anyway it’s none of your business,’ Lewis continues.

‘Okay,’ Nico says. ‘I don’t have to know.’

‘So don’t ask,’ Lewis adds unnecessarily.

‘I won’t,’ Nico promises, shaking his head. He wonders what that leaves to explain then but doesn’t ask after that either. 

He waits for Lewis to go on.

It takes him a while to, moments in which he studies Nico intently, waiting, maybe, but Nico wouldn’t know what for. ‘I know this might not make sense,’ he says at last, ‘but let me talk, okay?’ 

Nico wordlessly nods again because Lewis asked not to be interrupted and he will respect that even though what he wants is to tell him that he doesn’t have to make himself do this.

Lewis takes a deep breath. ‘I—I couldn’t be alone last night,’ he says slowly, his eyes widening in surprise as he says it. Nico guesses it’s not what he meant to say but it sounds about right. ‘I…’

He stops again, his gaze dropping back down to his hands. ‘I needed you,’ he admits finally. And then he laughs. 

It seems a sad and bitter little laugh, tinged with hysteria, but maybe Nico is reading into things because Lewis himself seems so tense and uncomfortable. But maybe he’s not. (He hopes he is.)

‘And… I don’t know,’ Lewis bites out, frustratedly, ‘I can’t—’

Nico can’t stand to watch him do this to himself. He’d promised but he can’t imagine Lewis is doing himself any favours with this. He’ll say something, he decides, if in the next few moments…

‘Lewis,’ he says gently, into the silence, ‘you don’t have to,’ with what he means to be a reassuring touch that Lewis shrugs off, drawing his hands back toward himself.

Lewis shakes his head. ‘You don’t understand. I do, I want to, I—just can’t find the words to,’ he concludes bitterly. ‘God, I’m so tired,’ he whispers.

‘I know,’ Nico says, feeling just as helpless as he had last night and at a loss of what else to do. ‘Can I ask—did you sleep at all last night?’ 

He hasn’t, Nico’s sure of it by now. This—whatever it is, and nothing good—has had Lewis lying awake all through the night and it has him still, this morning, on-edge and off-kilter and not at all like himself.

‘No,’ Lewis says. ‘I couldn’t. And I didn’t want to wake you again—no, alright, that was for me to decide—so I left in the morning when I realised…’—realised, Nico assumes, that sleep was out of the question—‘and I know you need your beauty sleep, so….’

It’s a perfunctory attempt at levity, that last comment, and not a successful one. Nico ignores it and the urge to ask _why_ , since he’s promised not to, and as long as he doesn’t maybe he can stop himself thinking about it too. ‘I’ll be here,’ he says, ‘if…’

‘If I want to talk,’ Lewis finishes for him. ‘If I can actually string two consecutive sentences together coherently, I know.’ He smiles, or something like it. ‘You’re here for me.’ 

‘I am,’ Nico confirms. He’s doing this wrong, he thinks, he’s no help at all. But he has no idea how to be. It’s not as if he even knows what this is all about, and apparently neither of them actually want him to. ‘And even if you can’t,’ he adds, in the hope that that can inject some normality into this conversation.

Lewis smiles, a little more genuinely than a moment ago, when it was really more of a wry grimace than anything. ‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘I want to, but… I can’t. Not now.’

‘I know,’ Nico says, which makes it twice in one day that he’s said that without actually knowing anything at all, now. It’s a useless turn of phrase but he has no clue what else to say that wouldn’t be. ‘I’ll be there.’

He watches the sunglasses make their reappearance, Lewis back to bouncing them end-on-end on the table. Nico lets him. And waits, not that there’s much else he could do. He can’t make Lewis talk, nor does he want to. 

‘I need time,’ Lewis finally announces, after they’ve sat in silence for what feels like (but in all likelihood probably wasn’t) another few minutes. For a moment, Nico thinks he’ll say something else, but instead he puts his sunglasses on—he looks passably put together with them on—and stands up. ‘I’ll see you in the garage, yeah.’

It’s not a question, and not even truly a request; it’s a statement of intent. Nico nods anyway and watches Lewis leave when he does, trying not to wonder.

**Author's Note:**

> I say 'coda' but let's face it, nothing was really ended. (Sorry.)


End file.
